Radio access networks (RANs) provide for radio communication links to be arranged within the system between a plurality of user terminals. Such user terminals may be mobile and may be known as ‘mobile stations’ or ‘subscriber units.’ At least one other terminal, e.g. used in conjunction with subscriber units, may be a fixed terminal, e.g. a control terminal, base station, eNodeB, repeater, and/or access point. Such a RAN typically includes a system infrastructure which generally includes a network of various fixed terminals, which are in direct radio communication with the subscriber units. Each of the fixed terminals operating in the RAN may have one or more transceivers which may, for example, serve subscriber units in a given local region or area, known as a ‘cell’ or ‘site’, by radio frequency (RF) communication. The subscriber units that are in direct communication with a particular fixed terminal are said to be served by the fixed terminal. In one example, all radio communications to and from each subscriber unit within the RAN are made via respective serving fixed terminals. Sites of neighboring fixed terminals may be offset from one another or may be non-overlapping or partially or fully overlapping.
RANs may operate as a proprietary overlay application, or may operate according to an industry standard protocol such as, for example, the Project 25 (P25) standard defined by the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International (APCO), or other radio protocols, such as the terrestrial trunked radio (TETRA) standard defined by the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI), the Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) standard also defined by the ETSI, an open media alliance (OMA) push to talk (PTT) over cellular (OMA-PoC) standard, a voice over IP (VoIP) standard, or a PTT over IP (PoIP) standard. Typically, P25, TETRA, and DMR networks are narrowband managed networks while PoC, VoIP, and PoIP are implemented over broadband networks including third generation and fourth generation networks such as third generation partnership project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks. Within the narrowband managed networks, P25 and TETRA based RANs are generally recognized as land mobile radio (LMR) networks, and may be more preferred or less preferred by network owners/operators and subscribers compared to other narrowband managed networks such as DMR networks. Within the broadband category, public safety LTE systems (pLTE) may approach or exceed the reliability and performance levels of LMR, while commercial LTE services, over which PoC, VoIP, and PoIP services are provided, may be considered equivalent or lower performing compared to DMR. Communications in accordance with any one or more of these standards, or other standards, may take place over physical channels in accordance with one or more of a TDMA (time division multiple access), FDMA (frequency divisional multiple access), OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access), or CDMA (code division multiple access) protocols. Subscriber units in RANs such as those set forth above send user communicated speech and data, herein referred to collectively as ‘traffic information’, in accordance with the designated protocol.
Many public safety RANs provide for group-based radio communications amongst a plurality of subscriber units such that one member of a designated group can transmit once and have that transmission received by all other members of the group substantially simultaneously. Groups are conventionally assigned based on function. For example, all members of a particular local police force may be assigned to a same group so that all members of the particular local police force can stay in contact with one another, while avoiding the random transmissions of radio users outside of the local police force.
When an event or incident occurs, such as a fire or accident, numerous different groups may respond to the incident, including for example, direct first responders such as police, fire, and medical groups and supporting responders such as utility, traffic control, crowd control groups, among others. Each of these groups may attempt to, and may actually secure, resources on one or more of the RANs available at the incident location. Given the limited availability of RF resources on any one RAN available at the incident location, however, subscriber units that are members of either of the direct first responders groups and the supporting responders groups may be unable to secure RF resources on the same RAN or on a preferred RAN, resulting in an inability of some members of each group to communicate with other members of the group on the same or on other RANs, and/or resulting in lower priority groups such as supporting responders groups obtaining RF resources at the expense of higher priority groups such as direct first responders groups. One RAN may be preferred over another RAN for a number of reasons. For example, subscriber units operating on a managed public safety narrowband RAN are normally granted elevated quality of service (QoS) levels that may not be granted, or may not be granted to the same extent, when operating on commercial LTE RANs, or other types of RANs. To the extent that subscriber units that are members of supporting responders groups secure RF resources on the managed public safety narrowband RANs at the expense of subscriber units that are members of direct first responders groups, the direct first responders groups may experience reduced services, features, and/or reliability.
For example, as shown in FIG. 1, a conventional incident scene 100 may have an incident center 102 and may have an incident boundary 104 manually or automatically defined surrounding the incident center 102, thereby defining a particular geographic area within the boundary 104 that is associated with the incident. Various incident responders (each of which may be a member of a corresponding incident response group) may already be on scene or within the incident boundary 104 at the time of the incident, including for example, a traffic control responder SU 114 and a utility responder SU 110. Each of these incident responder SUs may, in one example, already be actively using RF resources of a preferred RAN, such as a LMR RAN providing coverage substantially across the particular geographic area (e.g., within the incident boundary 104). However, as new incident response groups or as additional members of already existing incident response groups arrive within the incident boundary 104 and attempt to secure additional RF resources from the more preferred LMR RAN, including for example additional utility incident responder SU 112 moving from position 112A to 112B and finally to 112C within the incident boundary 104 and additional traffic control incident responder SU 116 moving from position 116A to 116B and finally to 116C within the incident boundary 104, all available RF resources at the more preferred LMR RAN may become used such that no additional (or insufficient) RF resources are available for subsequent incident responders or incident response groups. For example, subsequently arriving fire incident responder 120 (moving from position 120A to position 120B and finally to position 120C within the incident boundary 104) and subsequently arriving police incident responder 122 (moving from position 122A to position 122B and finally to position 122C within the incident boundary 104) may be unable to secure RF resources at the more preferred LMR RAN, and as a result, may be relegated to a less preferred (in one example) DMR or LTE based RAN for their group communications that may or may not provide sufficient coverage across the particular geographic area associated with the incident.
Accordingly, there is a need for a solution that would allow a controlling entity to determine the RANs that provide sufficient coverage in a particular geographic area associated with an incident, and to reassign members of various incident response groups to the determined available RANs based on one or more of the types of RANs determined available, the RF resources available at the determined available RANs, the communications abilities of the members of the various incident response groups, the assigned priorities of the determined available RANs, the assigned priorities of the incident response groups, the type of incident, and the location of the incident, among other factors.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.